Teachers Commit to No Kid Hungry Campaign

To get these stories, we set up a video booth and invited teachers, school secretaries, guidance counselors, and bus drivers to talk about hunger in their schools. As people stopped to learn more about Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry Campaign, I asked them if they see children struggling with hunger, and the stories began. I heard about 1,400 homeless children in Tacoma, Washington, a high school in upstate New York that started a food pantry to help address chronic hunger in their school, and a boy in the Midwest who brings zip lock baggies to school on Fridays so he can collect extra food for his family to get through the weekend.

Everything I heard verifies what we already know - that hunger is common in schools, that many kids rely on school meals for their primary source of nutrition, and that teachers and other school employees think nothing of buying extra food and snacks for kids who come to school too hungry to learn.

Several teachers explained that they regularly break school rules to give extra food to kids who are hungry, and many cited universal and/or in-classroom breakfast and lunch as critical sources of nutrition for kids who would otherwise go without.

You’ll be hearing more stories from teachers and others as we launch our No Kid Hungry campaign, but here’s one video I wanted to share from Lynn, a teacher in Minneapolis.

Do you see hunger in your community?